Turkey closes seven managers' TEFAS funds to trading and sends 130 into liquidation
Turkey's Capital Markets Board closed every fund of seven portfolio managers traded on TEFAS, the country's fund platform, to buy and sell orders, and the 130 funds named in its bulletin will be wound up by a method the Board determines. The order came a day after the Tera and Pusula redemption defaults this desk reported.
Economics & Markets··Midday
Seven managers' funds closed to trading
The Capital Markets Board's bulletin 2026/60 of 17 September 2026 uses decisions 57/1706 and 57/1707 to close every investment fund of Tera, Pusula, Hedef, Atlas, A1, Pardus and Bulls portfolio management traded on Turkey's electronic fund platform to buy and sell orders, and to wind up the 130 funds it names by a method the Board will determine. What is closed is the trading of those funds on the platform, not the companies themselves.[1], [2]
One fund shows the order of magnitude. TP2 at Tera Portföy, among the managers whose funds were closed, carried 167,000 investors and 224.4 billion lira in net assets at the 16 September close. It is one of the 130 funds the bulletin names; no total investor count or size across all seven managers' funds has been published.[6], [1]
Liquidation does not void a holder's units. Under the general rules a fund's assets are converted and the residue distributed to holders in proportion to their units; for these funds, though, the Board has not yet announced the method or the payment timetable.[1]
What the decision does today is narrow and clear: no new buying or selling of these funds can go through TEFAS. Everything beyond that — when and how money is paid — waits on the method the Board announces.[1], [2]
From a deal to liquidation in eight days
The chain began on 9 September, when talks were announced for Tera Grubu to acquire Pusula Finans Holding and its affiliates; the next day the parties reported agreement on the basic commercial and financial terms. No binding contract had been signed.[4]
On 12 September an Istanbul prosecutor issued an arrest warrant for Pusula Portföy chairman Muhammet Yarız; he said the same day that he had gone to the prosecutor in Bodrum, and the court he was sent to ordered his arrest. Two Katılımevim executives resigned from both boards.[4]
The perimeter does not stop at the portfolio managers. The investigation reached Pusula Finans Holding and its affiliated finance companies as well as Katılımevim; two executives resigned from both boards and Tera's founder took the seats they left.[4]
Then came the defaults. Pusula Portföy disclosed that some of its funds had defaulted on unit-redemption payments; on the evening of 16 September Tera Portföy filed the same notice for its own money-market and equity funds and tightened the exit terms of six hedge funds.[3], [4]
On 17 September the Board closed to trading not those two companies' funds alone but the TEFAS funds of seven managers at once. What a day earlier looked like a problem confined to two companies' own filings became, in the regulator's decision, a platform-wide measure.[1], [3]
The bulletin's other decision, and what stays open
The same bulletin lets the equity-protection ratio for margin trading be applied at a minimum of 20 per cent instead of the 35 per cent floor in the communiqué, to the extent it suits brokers' own risk policies and client demand, until the close of the 2 October 2026 session. It is a permission, not an instruction: no broker has to go to 20.[1], [2]
The two decisions sitting in one bulletin say the measure is not being treated as one group's problem: one closes seven managers' funds while the other loosens the market-wide floor for margin trading.[1]
The structure of these funds had been reported since April. On 24 April Bloomberg examined Tera Yatırım's shares, up about 40,000% since their 2022 listing, and its flagship fund's concentration in a tight circle of related companies, and reported the regulator working on related-party and concentration limits.[5]
Much stays open. The bulletin gives neither the method nor the timetable for the liquidation, and says nothing about when holders reach their money. No statement from the named companies or the platform reached the record on 17 September.[1], [2]
